Julie

People think they know us. The papers, the magazines – they love revealing our ‘secrets’. The details of our lives.

But nobody knows us. They just know things.

It’s still not very pleasant, but it’s the cost of being in the public eye. With Harry’s name a symbol for wealth during the Celtic Tiger years, and then a warning for excess during the crash, we were never going to avoid it.

Money defined us.

On my hen do back in 1996, in a luxurious spa hotel, my friends and sisters took turns pointing out the sort of wealth I was marrying into and what they’d do with it in my place.

‘How rich is he do you think, Julie?’ Grace asked. ‘I mean, are we talking millions or billions?’

‘Billions?’ my sister Lynn snorted. ‘Do billionaires even exist? Wouldn’t he be flying around in a shagging hovercraft rather than driving a BMW, if he’d that sort of Monopoly money in the bank?’

‘He owns a bank,’ Helen murmured from underneath a face mask. ‘He can print money.’

‘You’re wrong,’ I said, taking a sip from an exotically named pink-hued cocktail. ‘Harry can’t print money. Only the Central Bank can do that. HM Capital makes its profits from interest on loans and returns on its investments.’

‘Hark at her,’ Lynn laughed. ‘J. D. Rockefeller’s missus. Please tell us some more about banking – it’s riveting.’

‘You’re just jealous.’ I pouted.

In truth, I’d no idea how much Harry was worth when it came to his personal wealth. But I was starting to suspect he had more money than I could imagine.

He planned most of our wedding, taking it in hand like it was another business project. It never would have occurred to me to marry outside Ireland. Maybe in a county beyond Dublin – but abroad? Nobody did that in the nineties. And he insisted on keeping the final venue a surprise.

I thought it was romantic.

Looking back, I see it was just another way of Harry controlling things.

We flew to France, the wedding party and the guests, all together, on a chartered private plane.

‘Harry, my family haven’t closed their mouths since they got on,’ I said, snuggling up to him in the front row.

He was reading the Financial Times, his features fixed in concentration.

‘Good,’ he said. ‘They might even invite me for Christmas dinner this year, seeing as I’m spoiling them.’ It still rankled with him. He couldn’t understand the word ‘no’.

A young air hostess arrived beside us and I accepted the glass of wine she offered me.

‘Would you care for something yourself, Mr McNamara?’ she cooed, her make-up exact, hair delightfully coiffed.

The studious gaze fell from Harry’s face as soon as he saw her, replaced with a look normally reserved for me. It turned my stomach to ice. I’d seen him do that a couple of times, and I didn’t like it.

‘I think you can tell me now where exactly in France we’re going,’ I said, drawing his attention with a little squeeze to his upper arm.

He turned to me immediately. I caught the flash of disappointment on the girl’s face. For a moment, with his eyes on her, she had been elevated. She trotted off, ignored.

‘We’re going, my little princess, to a fairytale island,’ he said, and planted a big kiss on my lips.

‘Your little princess might need an actual marriage certificate from an actual registrar. Do they have civil servants on this fairytale island?’

Harry smiled cheekily. ‘I’m not saying another word unless you make me a member of the mile-high club.’

‘Bloody hell, Harry. A bit risky, don’t you think? With everybody we know onboard? What if my dad wants to use the loo?’

‘It’s the risk that turns me on.’ He winked.

*   *   *

We flew into Rennes and drove in a private coach through Normandy, staying that first night in a luxurious hotel en route. The following morning, after a breakfast of croissants and Bellinis, we continued by coach. My family, the rural Leitrim dwellers, were settling into this lifestyle like they’d been born to the manor. I heard my mother say she was going to buy peach juice to make her own Bellinis at home. Like we had champagne lying about in the drinks cabinet under the picture of the Virgin Mary in the back room. Like you could buy peach juice anywhere in Leitrim.

‘Are we actually getting married on an island?’ I asked, determined to get the information out of him.

Harry nodded.

‘Yup. The coach will bring us right up to the gates.’

‘The gates?’ I repeated. ‘Just so you know, I can’t walk anywhere. These are car-to-bar heels, my love. And if it’s an island, are we not going on a boat?’

He laughed. ‘No boat and don’t worry, it’s not far to the hotel once the coach leaves us off. I’ll give you a jockey-back. There are no private vehicles allowed inside the walls. There are hotels – but only a handful of families actually live there. It’s like a fortress built around an abbey.’

‘An abbey? Do they have many weddings?’

‘I’m starting to think I should have hired a tour guide.’

‘I’m sure you could just click your fingers and get hold of one,’ I snorted. ‘Seriously, Harry. Tell me everything.’

‘Oh, I could never tell you everything.’ He gave me a cheeky grin. ‘But it is time to reveal where we’re going.’

He got out into the aisle of the coach and clapped his hands.

‘Everybody, the bride-to-be would like me to play tour guide for the remainder of our trip.’

There was a cheer from the semi-tipsy bus occupants.

‘Now,’ Harry continued. ‘On your left, you’ll see a great big bloody sign telling you we’re en route to the island of Mont-Saint- Michel.’

More cheers.

‘We will, of course, be approaching the island via a causeway – I won’t be asking Julie to swim because as we all know, she is, in fact, a shite swimmer.’

‘Nearly drowned in the bath once,’ Helen piped up.

‘Two inches of water,’ my mam added.

‘And these days Julie likes to drown in champers,’ Harry intervened, and held my hand up to show them my glass.

‘Piss off,’ I said, to laughs.

‘So,’ he continued, ‘this place was once a proper island. But most of the land around it has been reclaimed. The legend goes that in the eighth century, the archangel Michael appeared to a bishop named Aubert in his sleep and commanded him to build an oratory there in his honour. Up the abbey went, on a massive rock in the sea, battered by currents and waves. Then, after years of being a religious centre, it was used as a prison during the French Revolution.’

‘We’re getting married in a prison?’ I said. ‘Très romantic!’

‘Don’t worry.’ Harry smiled. ‘There are no crooks there now.’

‘We’re bringing a bus full of bankers,’ my dad called from the back. This got the loudest clap. Dad stood up and bowed.

‘I’ll take that as a compliment,’ Harry said. ‘Now, we’re about to round the bend on to the causeway. One last piece of information. You reprobates have to behave yourselves. Mont-Saint-Michel is a tourist island, and they don’t generally allow marriages in the abbey. I had to promise them our first child for the use of the Magdalene chapel. No skinny-dipping, Mr and Mrs Ferguson. Ah – there it is.’

We all turned and looked out the left side of the coach.

Rising out of the sea, high into the mist, was a huge rock, climbing up, up, various turrets stretching to the clouds, the final point of the abbey lost in the vapours.

‘Oh my God!’ I gasped. ‘It’s … I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like something from Indiana Jones!’

‘Fuck me,’ Helen said, leaning over the top of my chair from the seat behind.

Even she was impressed. Harry knew how to pull it out of the bag.

On the morning of the wedding he had a bouquet of blue freesias delivered to my suite, along with a long, slender box containing an exquisite sapphire and diamond tennis bracelet.

Not as beautiful as the blue of your eyes, the note said, but there isn’t a jewel in the world that is.

I sat on the end of the bed and started to cry. That’s where my mother found me.

‘What in God’s name has you upset?’ she said, dabbing gently at my eyes with a handkerchief, not wanting to make them puffier than they already were.

‘It’s too good to be true,’ I said. ‘This – all of this. Harry is perfect. I’ve just been going along with all this like it’s normal, but I’m from bloody Leitrim, Mam. I haven’t even got a proper job yet. How did I end up here? How did I end up with him?’

She knelt in front of me and took her hands in mine.

‘You daft girl,’ she said, ‘getting yourself in a tizzy. There’s nothing wrong with where you come from, and of course he’s not perfect. For a start, he works fourteen-hour days. You haven’t minded up to now because you’re young and you have your independence and he makes a fuss of you every time you’re together. Wait and see how you feel when you’re at home with a house full of screaming tots and you don’t see Mr Perfect from one end of the week to the next. Jewels won’t cut it then. And what is it he does, exactly?’

‘What do you mean?’ I bristled. ‘You know what he does. He works in finance.’

How easily it had slipped into my everyday parlance.

‘He’s a banker,’ she said, her grey eyes holding mine. She’d been blonde once, like me, but now her hair matched her eyes. She still had the fine bone structure, was still a good-looking woman.

‘He’s not just a banker, Mam. He’s the CEO of Ireland’s leading capital company.’

‘Still a banker,’ she said. ‘In all my days, I’ve never known a glorified accountant to have money like he has. It strikes me he’s more like a loan shark to other wealthy people.’

‘Oh, Mam. Times have changed. The money that’s swirling around nowadays – finance is the way of the future. Everybody’s doing the same thing. Taking risks, earning big money.’

She sniffed, unconvinced.

‘He has an eye for the ladies too. You said that yourself.’

‘Mam! It’s my wedding day! I said he looked at other women sometimes; he doesn’t do anything more than that. That’s normal, isn’t it?’

‘I know it’s your wedding day, dote, but I’m speaking frankly. If not this morning, then when? You said he was perfect, as though that scares the life out of you, and I’m telling you he’s not. He’s a man. God never figured out the recipe for a perfect specimen. The world has been washed in women’s tears because of it. But Harry clearly loves you, he has means – Divine Mother, we all see he has means – and he makes you happy. And you’ve decided that’s enough. You’re right to. It’s more than what most women settle for.

‘Just don’t think you don’t deserve this because, if you ask me, he’s the one getting the bargain. He has nobody, Julie, and you have a whole family that adore you and are taking him into the fold. Now, wipe away those tears and let’s get you into this dress. Your sisters are already merry on bubbles. We’re going to have to carry them the three thousand bloody steps to the chapel if we don’t get a wriggle on. Honestly, only a man would pick a church you had to climb the side of a shagging mountain to get to.’

It was a testament to the woman that my mam could still be so measured in her opinion of Harry at that wedding. Everybody else was blown away. He spent a fortune spoiling me, spoiling everybody. Buying his way into their good books.

I met several of Harry’s business colleagues for the first time in Mont-Saint-Michel. Most of them were older than me – most of them were older than Harry – but they were important in his life and I wanted them to take me seriously.

I knew some of them by name even before I’d met my husband. Richard Hendricks part-owned a new Irish airline that was challenging the existing market monopoly. It was Richard who Harry had rented the private plane from to fly us to France. Tadhg de Burca was a famous Irish horse owner who’d won the English Grand National several years previous and ran a world-renowned stud farm. The rest were lesser known, but in some cases even wealthier businessmen.

Some of them managed to keep their riches in the crash that came later. Some, not all.

But that day, in the courtyard of our hotel, surrounded by sweetscented roses and fairy lights wound amid the jasmine vines, not one of us had a care in the world.

‘They call these little things “Napoleons”,’ Harry told me, holding a fork of the millefeuille dessert to my mouth. We were sharing a rare private moment, everybody else from the top table up dancing. I took the bite, making the act as provocative as I knew he wanted it to be, licking the custard with my tongue and clamping my lips shut on the end of the fork.

‘They used to call your beloved Napoleon in college,’ Richard Hendricks said. He’d appeared suddenly and crouched down between us, interrupting the intimacy. ‘Even then he had an uncanny ability to strategize for the future.’

He handed me an envelope, his little finger stroking mine. I didn’t think Harry had noticed, but he had nothing to worry about anyway. Richard was twenty years older than me, balding, his face lined with telltale broken capillaries, his overpriced suit almost bursting at the seams as it tried to contain him. He made my skin crawl. There was something very creepy about the man.

‘Your wedding gift.’

I took it gracefully.

‘Does that make me your Josephine?’ I said, looking back to Harry.

‘Sweetheart – I think you’re my Waterloo.’ He kissed me full on the lips, deliberately, inches away from his friend’s face.

Later that night, up in our honeymoon suite, I opened Richard’s card, withdrawing the large wad of money. My eyes widened.

‘Jesus, Harry. Look at all this cash.’

Harry laughed, but there was an edge to it. He’d lit a cigar, and exhaled a cloud of bitter-smelling smoke.

‘Go on, then,’ he said. ‘Count it. Let me see your teller skills. I might give you a job in the bank yet.’

I raised an eyebrow and waved away the cigar smoke.

It took me three minutes to count out the notes.

I looked up at Harry, my jaw nearly on the floor. He had an expression of mild amusement on his face. At the sum, or at my reaction, I don’t know.

‘Harry. What the hell? Who are these people?’

‘You know who they are,’ he said. ‘You know how wealthy they are too.’

‘Yes, I know, but – seriously? Is he using us for money laundering or something?’

‘That’s Richard. He thinks he can buy anything. Still thinks he can buy me. He hasn’t a clue. I can outspend him in a heartbeat.’

‘But this … Christ, we could buy a house with what’s in these cards. Outright.’

‘We already have a house,’ he said. ‘But you can get another if you like. You could buy one here, in Normandy.’

‘Sure. I’ll buy a house. I’ll nip down to an estate agents in the morning and see what they’ve got.’

He laughed.

‘Did you enjoy today, wifey?’

He’d switched a gear. Talking about Richard made him uneasy. I didn’t know why. I didn’t know what Richard had on him. What he knew about my husband that I didn’t.

‘It was all right,’ I said, answering his question. ‘As weddings go. To be honest, I think I would have preferred a quickie visit to the registry office in Leitrim and a bag of chips for afters.’

‘A bottle of cider and a romp in a field?’

‘That too.’ I smiled.

Harry grabbed me around the waist.

‘I’d do anything for you. I love you to bits, Julie Ferguson McNamara.’

He did. No matter what happened afterwards, he really did love me.

I know what’s on your mind. You’re wondering – did Harry get a second wind on our wedding night? Did we throw all of Richard’s cash on to the bed like confetti and go on top of it like rabbits?

Absolutely. Who wouldn’t? Money was like a Viagra drip for Harry.

We were the Celtic Tiger generation, and while my background might have been simple, even I couldn’t escape the allure of real money.

Maybe that was why I turned a blind eye to how Harry earned it.